Lord Ryder
"I don't waste time trying to understand the Master, Ellie. Last time I did, he taught me a permanent lesson on my face." - Sutanu F'thar Lord Valithria Ryder is the Warlord of the Val'kyr and the central deuteragonist of the series. Biography Ryder was born in 1989 in the eastern United States. In 2008, Ryder, then a sociology student, was killed in an attack orchestrated by Jehovah, who was making plans to start intervening in human life once again and wanted a champion to act as his enforcer and seemingly chose Ryder at random. Ryder was brought to the Capital and began training under Guardian Angels, being allowed to keep her identity to make the process move much faster. She was branded and enslaved to Jehovah, forced to serve him in her afterlife. Being planted back onto Earth under the guise of serving as a Guardian Angel to her widow, Megan Ryder, Ryder returned to the closest thing to a normal life she would ever have again. Eventually, however, her wife and daughter were killed in events also orchestrated by Jehovah. While Megan was granted the same afterlife that Ryder was, Jaina was obliterated. This led to Ryder and Megan turning on Jehovah and ousting him from the Capital, building a new society from the remains of the Angels that had stood with them. While Megan worked on securing resources and infrastructure for the damaged Capital, Ryder went off into the far reaches of the galaxy to collect knowledge about combat and magic that had so far exceeded her capabilities. Finding multiple masters throughout the galaxy, she mastered thousands of magical and physical arts and methods of crafting weapons, armor and structures, along with many ingenious methods of securing food. Ryder returned from her pilgrimage and began training apprentices and new Masters, creating a war machine that proved itself to be unstoppable for over a billion years. In that time, Ryder hunted nearly every last deity to extinction, permanently sealed Hell so no mortal would ever be imprisoned there again, trained four of the most powerful women in the galaxy, and gained a reputation across the cosmos as the most powerful individual to have ever existed. Ryder was at first born Masculine, but at some point during her life she assumed a feminine identity and took the name "Valithria", though she used illusions to hide this from the Val'kyr. How long this lasted remains a mystery, but according to Megan: Ryder had been disguising her body from the very start and had identified this way since they were children. This was discovered by Elethyn Crane, though she was put under orders to say nothing. When Naz'ryth attacked the citadel, it could sense Ryder's illusion and focused attacks on her. Defeated, Ryder was lifted into the air by Naz'ryth's tendrils and crushed until her strength gave out and her illusion dropped in front of everybody, revealing her secret to the rest of the Val'kyr. After the battle, with her secret revealed, Ryder saw no point in maintaining the illusions that had hidden her identity and as such ceased using them. After Jehovah's assault on the Capital, Ryder was affected deeply by the deaths of both Tolrah and Megan and became reclusive. Each of the apprentices reacted differently to this, with Phyaun and Sutanu actively growing hostile to her and Elethyn making passionate pleas to not tear apart "their family." This only worsened Ryder's reclusive behavior. Ryder's well-maintained air of tranquility was finally broken for the first time in almost two billion years when Ascentia finally confronted her with her shared experiences of traumatic abuse. Personality Valithria was an extremely bitter and asocial woman, deeply affected by her enslavement and torture at the hands of Jehovah. She was known for her unwillingness to outwardly express her emotions, preferring reserved and obfuscated reactions and a desire to keep everyone at an arms length. Despite this, Valithria felt a great deal of genuine affection and love for her wife, daughter and apprentices. Jaina, Megan, and Tolrah's respective deaths left her extremely wounded, though she refused to show it to the others. Valithria also had an extreme touch-aversion caused by the psychological damage Jehovah had inflicted on her, reacting with hostility when others laid their hands on her. The sole exception to this rule were small children, as they often didn't know any better and so she begrudgingly tolerated being touched by them. Her four students, while trailing after her in their early childhood, often gave her a wide berth and respected her need for solitude in their adult years because of this. Both Dawning Wind and Magselyn Crane, however, learned early on to respect her discomfort toward being touched. Valithria was an exceptionally capable leader, and rarely (if ever) led her people to defeat. Her tactics were cold and ruthless, and her flagrant disregard for mortal rights were a key aspect to many of her victories. Valithria practiced, and frequently encouraged, the killing of civilians, the targeting of families, the destruction of tertiary targets like hospitals and schools, active uses of terrorism, and the total destruction of enemy morale. Her amoral strategies often sent her enemies into a scattered, disorganized mess. She cared little for the supposed ethical implications of things like murder and mind control. Her only boundaries were tactics that he deemed unnecessary and a needless consumption of time and resources, such as torture and rape. Her line of thought being "Why not cut out the middleman and kill them right now?" Valithria was also considered to be an extreme abberation of an autocrat, possessing no cult of personality, no ego, a great deal of honesty regarding her preferred method of governing, and an unwillingness to engage in propaganda. As a result of this sincerity, she earned an almost unwavering respect and loyalty of the Val'kyr. Ironically, her refusal to engage in a Cult of Personality and her insistence on being forthcoming ultimately created the strongest Cult of Personality imaginable. Relationships The Apprentices Ryder was deeply loved by her three students (Tolrah, Phyaun, and Ascentia), who viewed her as a surrogate mother. Ryder seemed to be unaware of this. When Twilight Sparkle angrily remarked that she didn't understand the pain of looking for a lost child because she "had no family", all three apprentices shut her down, an act which genuinely surprised her. Jehovah Ryder had a deep-seated loathing of Jehovah for being an apathetic ruler who refused to lead his followers in any way. This hatred was only magnified when Jehovah killed her daughter and set the Val'kyr uprising in motion. Ironically, both Jehovah and Ryder are possessed of an intense fear of eachother. Princess Twilight ]] Ryder saw through Twilight's deceptive mask almost instantly and the two butted heads over almost every issue. Ryder held Twilight in a great deal of contempt due to the fact that she could easily see how much Twilight was taking Ascentia for granted and how her pride was endangering her people time and time and time again. Twilight even on several occasions gloated to Ryder about how Ascentia belonged to her now. During the Siege of Canterlot, Twilight once again butted heads with Ryder over her violent solutions and refused to accept that trying things her way didn't work. On one occasion she put everyone in the Garrison at risk and forced Ryder to absorb a Balefire strike with her entire body, resulting in her being critically injured and Twilight being made a pariah among the garrison. Just before her marriage with Ascentia went up in smoke, Twilight tried to convince Ascentia that Ryder was a toxic influence, but Ascentia would not budge on the matter. Trivia *Valithria is the only transgender character in the entire series, a revelation that was vaguely alluded to on numerous occasions before being finally confirmed. *Valithria's first name was unknown for a long time, before finally being revealed to be "Valithria." *It is suggested that Valithria suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from her enslavement under Jehovah and the subsequent death of her daughter. When Jehovah killed Tolrah and Megan, this is assumed to have worsened her condition. *Valithria is built around the trope "Designated Hero." A character who is technically a "hero" in the sense that they are either an ally to the real heroes or circumstances have rendered them not officially the villain. *Valithria takes a lot of influence from Sylvanas Windrunner, being an amoral and ruthless leader primarily motivated from having everything taken from her and enslaved to someone with delusions of grandeur and having been so deeply affected by it that she came out a much different person than she had been originally. *Valithria is currently the record holder for most retcons in the series. * Valithria is frequently referred to by those outside the Val'kyr by the terms "Outlander" "Valkyrie" and "Banshee." Category:Val'kyr Category:Main Characters